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March 05, 2005
Ages 8 and Up
“I’d rather be dead than playing Dungeons and Dragons when I’m forty-five.”
—Mick Jagger
Okay, so I’m paraphrasing Sir Mick slightly. But here's an unretouched quote from roughly the same era:
“While it might seem highly unlikely to those who have not been involved in fantasy adventure gaming for an extended period of time, after the flush of excitement wears off—perhaps a few months or a year, depending on the intensity of play—some participants will become bored ... Even your most dedicated players will occasionally find that dungeon levels and wilderness castles grow stale, regardless of subtle differences and unusual challenges.”
—Gary Gygax
That’s from my first edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, published 1979. As always, Gygax cracks me up. Dungeon crawls grow stale? Say it ain’t so, Gary! Have no fear: after the section I just quoted, the DMG goes on to offer a foolproof solution: tables for converting your AD&D characters into Boot Hill or Gamma World stats. Now there will be no stopping you.
But anyway, here’s my question for the day: When, if ever, do you think you will stop gaming? Or do you ever think about stopping? What would make you? Do you think you will still be gaming five years from now? Ten years from now? Twenty? As a kid, I found it hard to believe that grownups—by which I meant people in their twenties—might actually play RPGs. Now I’m in my thirties and still at it. Gary Gygax, like Mick Jagger, is old enough to get a discount at the movies. Do you think you’ll still be slaying orcs when you’re that age?
I’m thinking about this a lot right now. Not because I’m getting bored of “dungeon levels and wilderness castles”—perish the thought! But I’ll be moving away from Boston this summer, and I think the chances are miniscule that I’ll find a gaming posse when I move that is as active and talented as the one I’m leaving behind. I’m way too spoiled by the way our gaming has grown and changed to settle for much less. So I imagine I’ll be probably be putting my dice on the shelf for a while. (Not necessarily forever. I thought I was done with gaming a decade ago when I left college for grad school, but (after more than five years on the wagon) I did eventually come slinking back to the old hobby store. And of course I hope to parachute back in to Boston for visits and one shots from time to time. But at the very least I think I’ll be taking a break.)
But mine is a situational case. When I ask when or if you’re ever going to quit, the real question I’m asking, I guess, is what do you get out of gaming? Which, as I review my contributions to the 20’ by 20’ Room over the past year and a half, seems to be the main question I’ve returned to again and again in one form or another.
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Comments
I've thought about quitting gaming many times. Usually the night before I'm supposed to GM something. And I mean that seriously, not just as a joke. I'm finding I'm getting less and less enjoyment out of gaming lately. As a GM I think I have good storytelling chops but poor session-management skills. As a player I get frustrated if I feel I'm being railroaded, and feel lost at sea if I'm given too much of a leash. Right now I'm thinking my current Star Wars game wil only go 2 more sessions and then I'll hang up my GMing hat. I hadn't run anything for almost 2 years before that and I found I still didn't like it. And I'm supposed to be starting in 2 upcoming games and playing in 2 other current ones. Once those wrap I don't know that I'll want to get into any others. None of this is due to incompetely GMs or players or anything. I just don't seem to be having fun. It's a lot like how I felt when, after a couple of fruitless attempts, I decided I wasn't interested in writing games but would rather do it as just a hobby. But when the hobby starts taking up huge amounts of time and effort and the payoffs aren't providing that kick anymore, is it time to quit?
That said, I want to be eighty years old, sitting on my porch swing, with a fresh cube of d6s in my hand and the latesthow new gaming pdf on my palmtop. In all honesty I don't have the willpower to quit cold turkey, and most of my social relationships are based on game groups.
What does all this mean in the greater sense for gaming as an industry or any of that high-falootin' stuff? Nothing. Just me blathering. Aren't you sorry you asked?
Posted by: Chris T. at Mar 5, 2005 7:05:48 PM
I've gamed for most of my life and I plan to keep at it, yeah. I was having a rough go of it for a while -- that happens from time to time -- but I have recently found a bunch of new techniques that I think will help me get the sort of gaming I want regardless of where I find myself. Indeed, so improved of late have I become that for a while I'll want to keep at it just to refine the techniques that I've recently been exposed to -- to spread them around so I can see other people light up at the things I know. For me, gaming is pretty much like how Vincent Baker said in a recent interview: nowadays my average sessions are better than my best sessions with my best friends during high school. I see no reason why this is gonna stop.
Posted by: Chris Bradley at Mar 5, 2005 7:16:47 PM
I've given up bad roleplaying. I won't sit through a GM monologuing (with occasional "What do you do? Okay, now here's what I have planned to happen next..." breaks). I won't run a game where people expect me to entertain them while they sit back and spectate. I won't argue whether Superman or the Hulk would win a fight "in the real world", and I certainly won't accept games where similarly pointless debates (like whether someone with 18/00 strength could swim wearing elven chainmail) are relevant to play. I remember enjoying all those things, once upon a time, but they have ceased to amuse.
Right now I'm more excited about roleplaying, generally, than I've been for more than two decades. I'm eager to play, eager to plan, eager to chatter about what happened last session. This is because I'm playing games that create game-play that satisfies me: Dogs in the Vineyard, My Life with Master and Capes, mostly.
What I want is simply for every single session I play to be a better experience of storytelling than I could get solo. That doesn't mean that the story that gets left (like dead coral) after the session is finished has to be better in literary terms, but that the growing, living, in-the-moment telling of it is more fun, more challenging and more illuminating than I would manage by myself.
At this point I can't imagine retiring: the only way this wouldn't keep being a good deal for me is if either (a) I became a MUCH better solo storyteller than I am right now, or (b) I gave up on that most fundamentally human of activities, storytelling. Neither seems likely, so I'll probably be organizing RPGs in the nursing home.
Posted by: TonyLB at Mar 5, 2005 7:32:23 PM
It's a social hobby. It gives me a creative outlet, which is awfully nice. It satisfies my need to be (sometimes) the center of attention, in a fairly healthy manner. It's not the most important thing in my life; I could not game and still be fairly content. But I like doing it. And it's a good way to meet people, as is perhaps obvious from the fairly solid social circle I think I've built up since I moved back to Boston and started gaming with the crowd I'm gaming with now.
(And yeah, I think that has an existence outside the game table. Heck, I've been on short vacations with Bostonians I've met over dice. Vacations to places other than gaming cons!)
I don't game for story. I game for interaction. Story is really secondary to that; I get a kick out of helping other people show off their characters and being helped in return.
It's another way for minds to meet. Those are cool.
Posted by: Bryant at Mar 5, 2005 7:47:00 PM
They can have my negotiated imaginary space when they pull it from my cold, dead braincells.
All the way, baby.
Posted by: Jonathan Walton at Mar 5, 2005 11:52:52 PM
It's strange, I don't get into comics as much anymore, or videogames. They're neat, but they're sort of trivial entertainments at this point- they just don't hold my attention like they used to, which makes me a bit sad because all kinds of neat, new stuff is going on with them. But roleplaying? I'm more interested now than I was when I was younger. All the new games coming out, all the different ways to play games. I know that as long as I have hearing, imagination, and the ability to speak, I can still be entertained through gaming. I can't imagine the day I choose to give it up, although I could see not having enough folks my age to game with :)
Posted by: Chris at Mar 6, 2005 12:23:01 AM
This is the age of the self-identified community. Mine happens to originate from gaming. Probably healthier than others I could name, nor is it backward thinking like anchoring one's social network in college friends.
Social networks take energy to build, and gaming provides an easy avenue for that energy. Same way going to the gym or knitting does. It just means that when moving to a new place you are going to need to work to get a new good gaming circle together. But honestly its not any more work than building a new social circle of any type.
Posted by: Jere at Mar 6, 2005 7:59:31 AM
I will almost certainly be gaming long after I retire... in fact, I look forward to my retirement, when I will be able to devote the time I'd like to writing, gaming, going to cons, etc. I think the golden age of RPG's will finally arrive in fifteen to twenty years when large numbers of gamers start retiring.
Posted by: Vaxalon at Mar 6, 2005 9:19:33 AM
Good quotes here.
:)
Thirty years plus and I will not stop. Neither will I stop getting others into gaming if I can. I think 'retiring' in fifteen to twenty years to a social mental landscape with plenty of new combinations sounds grand.
I can hardly wait.
Posted by: Arref at Mar 6, 2005 10:26:11 AM
I actually did stop once, for ten years, but I came back. I hope Nate will stop by and link back to his own explanation. In paraphrase, I love games, and I love spending time with my friends, and RPGs let me do both at the same time.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Mar 6, 2005 11:29:09 AM
I stopped gaming about 15 years ago. I was 17, and it was about time to stop hanging around in my friends' basements; I had to meet girls and start doing all the stuff people try to quit doing when they grow up. Also, games were boring.
Then, about three years later, I read about "Over the Edge". It was supposed to be really different, and I bought it, and it was. I had a lot of new friends then, and got some of them to try it out; even if they'd never played before, they really got into it. It rocked.
Will I ever stop again? Yes, if it gets boring, or I have other stuff to do that I like better, or that's better for me. It has to be fun, otherwise there's no point.
Posted by: Matthijs at Mar 6, 2005 12:04:13 PM
Jere, Jim and TonyLB have explained my reasons for gaming much better than I could. But I can say something about moving from Boston.
So, when I moved away from Boston two years ago, I had the same worry that you did -- I was in the company of some seriously talented people, and worried I would not meet their like again. And in fact, I didn't meet their like again -- I don't know anyone like Jere or Shinpei except, well, Jere and Shinpei. But through some happy miracle the one thing the world does not lack for is talented and enthusiastic people, and I was able to put together a group of people and do the gentle cheerleading that let them unleash their energy as gamers.
And hey, because they were having fun, they were all open to the idea of trying out new and strange games. The urge for experiment and novelty comes from safety and happiness, rather than from misery. Play games with people who entertain you and who you entertain, and almost automagically you will create a talented and active group.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Mar 6, 2005 7:02:17 PM
This totally hits the same bomb I dropped in Vincent's weblog recently. I'll be role-playing until I can't find a point in it. And I can't find a point in most role-playing these days. I gave up RPGs for about a year after I moved to Seattle, and I was still running the Forge. I couldn't figure out why I'd want to play - I could entertain myself at home.
It was when I finally realized the entire soul-changing, relationship-building power of some play that I got back into it. I made friendships that will never die: not while playing RPGs, but because of playing RPGs. And that'll keep me going until the firing squad comes.
Posted by: Clinton R. Nixon at Mar 6, 2005 9:17:08 PM
I began role playing as an adult. I have gone through periods where I've done more or less, but it has been a steady part of my recreational diet since it came into my life. What it gives me is a way to collaborate creatively with groups of people I love best, the ability to experiment with a form I enjoy, and a way to get to know myself, and others, better.
There's a lot of things I love to do in life, but role playing has stayed near the top of the list for a long time. I'd be surprised if that changed in the next four years, or forty.
Posted by: Emily Care at Mar 7, 2005 9:57:17 AM
My husband and I (who met at the table) have been joking about the Old Gamers' Home for as long as I can remember.
I've gone through ups and downs in gaming. Having moved across the country last year, I'm sympathetic to the worries about finding a new group. It's taken me a year to start finding good people I want to game with. I also do PBeM, which is great for me and can build a lot of similar bonds--I just got back from a trip to DC to meet up with our PBeM friends for a long weekend, and we had a blast. I plan to be doing that until I'm stuck in the Old Gamers' ICU and can't type any more.
Posted by: Ginger Stampley at Mar 7, 2005 12:07:08 PM
I enjoy roleplaying, but I can substitute with other group oriented activities. Often, the numbers that I want to include in one meeting are too large for good [to me] roleplaying and for most European style board games [which are my current preferred substitution]. So I'm expanding my collection of party games.
I'll be doing something social, probably with dice and chits in hand, for as long as I live. If I have a decent group, it'll be roleplaying; if not, we'll find another excuse to sit around a table and play together.
Posted by: ScottM at Mar 7, 2005 1:33:59 PM
I started gaming since I was around 8, and after a year or two, I've never seriously considered stopping. I've had some slow times corresponding to when I moved, and when I first had my kid. But those are fairly obvious and temporary reasons. I did have to slog through some relatively dull gaming during these times, but quality was restored after some time. I don't see myself stopping in the next thirty years or so.
It's worth noting that I've met most of my girlfriends (including my wife) through role-playing. I think that makes a big difference. I definitely prefer the directed social contact of role-playing, and have reaped social benefits from it (both romantic and otherwise). I also enjoy the process of self-exploration which playing different characters leads me down; and the learning about various topics which it has driven; and the satisfaction of creative expression.
Posted by: John Kim at Mar 8, 2005 12:45:21 AM
I have a theory that those who like to read and can visualize scenes fairly well will probably be drawn to gaming until they die. I grew up before television and remember sitting by the radio listening to "the Lone Ranger", "Sgt. Preston of the Yukon", "The Green Hornet" and "the Shadow" among many others. I have been gaming for at least 25+ years and although many of my generation look at me strangely, will probably continue for another 25+. Is it the social aspect? the story telling? the gaming itself? To some degree they all add to my enjoyment of roleplaying. Perhaps it is as simple as the fact that I taught for 35 years and enjoy having a captive audience, but I notice that almost every one of my friends who roleplayed in the past has either continued or has recently returned to the fold.
Will I continue gaming? I'm 60 and retired now and still gaming. Somehow I don't see myself changing much at my age.
Posted by: Jim at Mar 8, 2005 3:37:53 AM
Look, Comment Spam!
I've just come out of a 'dark ages' where I wasn't gaming hardly at all - I was buying (and reading) the occasional game, but I wasn't actively playing anything. It'd D&D 3rd that rocked me out of those doldrums, and I've been more than active since. Given that my wife's gaming along with me, I suspect I'll be gaming for a while longer, especially since they've gone and given me the RPG section of one of the conventions here.
Posted by: John Fiala at Mar 8, 2005 12:20:52 PM
Weirdest thing. I'm 30 now, married, house and tough job, and doing far more gaming - quality gaming at that - than I did even in college. I grew out of bars and parties and grew into hanging out with friends in a quiet, relaxed environ. That, plus the fact that it's a relatively cheap hobby, plus the fact that I've had a lot of good experiences with it... Yeah, I'll be gaming for the forseeable future.
Interesting subnote: Many of you know Ben Lehman from GenCon or Vincent's blog. He's coming to stay over with me in NC for about a week. He doesn't know it yet, but he's pretty much gonna get Raped by Gaming this week. Turns out that another good gaming friend is in town, and we're basically going to game ourselves silly:
Tonight: Board Games, talking
Wed night: The Shadow of Yesterday
Thursday afternoon: Something (most likely make Ben run Polaris for us)
Thursday evening: Conan OGL (note: the only thing that saved this game for us is the fact that we basically made characters, ignored all the rules, and just talk in character for 3-4 hours)
Fri/Sat/Sunday: At least two more gaming sessions over those three days.
It's crazy, this is the most amount of gaming I've ever done. But hey, I've got a week from when I quit my current job (tomorrow) and when I start my next job, so in the absence of planning a trip to the mountains, I'm going to Play my Brains Out, I guess.
-Andy
Posted by: Andy Kitkowski at Mar 8, 2005 1:02:49 PM
Gaming takes a hit when kids come into your life. (So do a lot of other things.) Moving away from people I knew and gamed with reduced me to doing some WebRPG gaming and not much else for a couple of years. Now that I am living within reach of old gaming friends (and some newer ones, as well), I'm doing more gaming.
I am presently in a couple of different game groups. One meets bi-weekly, and that is as much social, getting together with longtime friends, as it is for the game. The others are approximately monthly (though one seems to be on hiatus right now). I also do some other occasional gaming and game design work with another couple of friends. I feel pretty lucky, in fact, in that I have a group of gaming friends who are still close by, and that I am still able to do as much gaming as I do.
As some others have mentioned, I think that moving to a new place can be devastating to one's gaming. Some people may be more gregarious and have an easier time finding a new group. I had a stretch of years where I was not involved in any F2F gaming because I didn't have a group I fell in with. That led to some of the online work I did in creating DragonQuest related materials.
As my kids get older and my life gets even more complicated, I can see gaming fading away to some extent, and becoming even more occasional than it is now, but I think it'll be something I think about, at least, for many years still to come.
Posted by: Rodger Thorm at Mar 8, 2005 4:51:44 PM
After college, my face to face gaming really dwindled, but I could not stay away. Play-by-snail-mail and postal diplomacy kept me through the Peace Corps years and the pre-Internet years. Since the mid-90's, I've had my gaming itch scratched online. Even if you move away from a great FTF group, there are just-as-good-if-not-better ones online, like http://www.woldiangames.com.
I tried to quit for about six months, a response to having too much real life stuff to do. But I got really depressed. Gaming adds creativity, social interaction, imagination, strategy, and fun to my life -- I'd be a fool to give that up!
Posted by: Cayzle at Mar 8, 2005 6:32:26 PM
My gaming has really dwindled, but I think it is because I have become more of an elitist as I grow older. I just can't grind through a game unless I am getting something out of it beyond escapism. I mean that is what computer games are for after all. So I figure I will be playing until I can't find folks to play with that allow me to get something more out of it...
Posted by: Keith at Mar 9, 2005 12:08:56 PM
I think I might be an elitist. I haven't had a solid group to game with for several years now. I flirt with this one or another for a couple of months, but ultimately the group simply falls apart. I've been even willing to drive for two hours to reach decent gaming. It just seems like most adults are too busy to make a scheduled night of gaming, week after week.
So, I still collect gaming books of all different stripes and kinds. I do hope to play again someday, as either a GM or player. But my lack of groups have actually pushed me into enjoying the hobby in a different way: designing and writing my own games. Now if only I became more disciplined and finished some projects...
Posted by: Jack at Mar 14, 2005 1:08:48 PM
